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Soft skills, or essential skills depending on who you ask, are often underrepresented in the cybersecurity world. We can code, connect pieces of a puzzle together to develop intel, fight back against threat actors, and yell at everyone around us for poor digital hygiene. However, the glue between all aspects of cybersecurity is communication, and the way we articulate and tell stories makes the difference between people absorbing the information to take action or watching their eyes gloss over and it getting ignored (and also money, it’s always a money thing).
This week we chat with Courtney Hans, VP of Cyber Services at AmTrust Financial Services, and Evgeniy Kharam, author of Architecting Success: The Art of Soft Skills, who help us explore how non-technical skills are vital in shaping the careers of cybersecurity professionals.
Key Takeaways
Soft skills, often referred to as 'non-tech skills,' are essential for successful communication and collaboration in cybersecurity.
Courtney emphasizes the importance of active listening and understanding stakeholders' motivations.
Evgeniy discusses the necessity of curiosity and vulnerability in building these skills.
Neal highlights the importance of tailored communication and how personal experiences can build presentation abilities.
The discussion covers techniques like soliciting feedback, transferring excitement from fear, and leveraging personal passion in presentations.
We all agree that continuous learning and exposing oneself to public speaking to develop these skills is critical.
Producer’s Note
As we sprint towards the end of the year, we can officially close out season 3 of AZT. With three full years behind u,s we have tackled what Zero Trust really means, heard from those who have adopted it, and taken many side adventures.
As we head towards season 4 we are looking forward to expanding our focus to a broader look at cybersecurity strategy, connecting you with experts to advance your career in cyber, and find other interesting stories to tell. As always, we love feedback and your ideas, so please feel free to send them our way.
That all said Neal and I produce this show for you, and we are grateful that you take some time out of your busy life to hear us blab on about topics we care about. We hope you have a wonderful holiday, new year, and may it be free of incidents and misconfigurations.
Breaking Down the Concept of Soft Skills
Are they truly soft skills, or are we downplaying the concept when we use that phrasing? Interestingly enough, those who embrace the gift of gab and persuasion often have a different variation, and Courtney is no different. In fact, she feels it’s important to reframe these skills as essential rather than secondary to technical proficiency. And, if you have had the pleasure of seeing her present, you certainly know she wields it with a force to be reckoned with and you can expect the entire audience to get involved.
That aside, she also shared some of her journey from an adventure travel guide to a cybersecurity professional, and underscored the value of communication and adaptability. Her experiences in engaging high-powered clients as a guide were directly transferable to her current career, emphasizing how understanding audience needs and tailoring communication are critical components of effective cybersecurity practices.
Unpacking the Spectrum of Soft Skills
Evgeniy expanded on the concept of soft skills by introducing the term human skills and outlining various contexts where these skills come into play. Like Courtney, he uses his communication skills to better the world of cyber by bringing people together in intimate settings. Think skiing trips with pockets of discussion rather than speaking at you on a stage. He emphasizes curiosity and vulnerability as foundational soft skills that drive growth and engagement.
Meanwhile, Neal, as both a speaker and practitioner, shared some stories about his transition from a military background to presenting on stages around the world. He highlighted the importance of getting over initial fears to focus more on serving the audience. He elaborated on how practicing these skills and receiving constructive feedback can enhance one's presentation abilities and improve interactions with colleagues and clients alike.
Strategies for Building and Enhancing Soft Skills
Through the episode Courtney offered strategies for building soft skills, such as actively seeking feedback and remaining curious. Both Neal and Evgeniy also stressed the necessity of overcoming initial discomfort to achieve personal growth. The discussion brings forward different techniques to handle fear and excitement, ultimately advocating for embracing challenges as opportunities for development.
Why Soft Skills Matter in Cybersecurity
The episode emphasizes that while technical skills are indispensable, soft skills are equally crucial in facilitating effective communication, collaboration, and problem-solving within teams and with clients. The ability to convey complex technical information in an accessible manner can differentiate successful cybersecurity professionals from their peers.
Be Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
To wrap things up the consensus among the hosts and guests is clear: To progress in cybersecurity or any technical field, you should aim to be comfortable with discomfort. This means continually pushing boundaries and welcoming new challenges, as these experiences cultivate resilience and enhance one's capabilities.
And while cybersecurity is steeped in technology, the human element cannot be overlooked. By leveraging soft skills, professionals not only advance their careers but also contribute to a more collaborative and effective cybersecurity landscape.
Show Transcript
This transcript was automatically created and is undoubtedly filled with typos. As usual, we blame the machines for any errors.
Elliot V: Hello, and welcome back to Adopting Zero Trust or AZT. I am Elliot Volkman, your producer alongside Mr. Neal Dennis, our host. And we have two wonderful guests today to talk about a topic, which is not quite around the realm that we usually talk about. Although I feel like I say that almost every episode that we are changing and talking about something new, but this truly is a little bit to the side.
We are going to be talking about soft skills. And if you're watching this video Mr. Denny who has been with us before. Has a wonderful shirt, which Courtney has
Courtney: I'm envious of it. I mean, we're going to have to follow up so I can figure out where to get one myself.
Neal: I want
Elliot V: So he came prepared,
Neal: iterate real quick, Elliot does say this every episode for the last 18 episodes, however, comma, I think the whole point of this has been, you never know what skills you're going to need to make everything from zero trust to cyber security a reality,
Courtney: True
Neal: that's why we're here, so it's all related.
I got to get it out of his wordsmithing brain to, to say that we got it. We'll fix him by the end of this meeting.
Elliot V: Oh, good luck with that. I will put heavy bets against them, but
Evgeniy: new, so this is actually very important part and was a motivation to write the book. One of them is we have many amazing engineers, many amazing boys and girls that have amazing brain, but in some cases. They have a hard time or they don't know how to speak the language that the other person wants to know.
I think one of the interesting examples I like to talk about it is if you put a developer and accounting in the same room and tell them, please only use the acronyms you use with your buddies, watch how is it going to communicate or not communicate. And you just provide a very good example of how you translate it.
Elliot V: You went that's pretty common. I'll be honest with you. Which is the worst part because I'm the comms guy. So I should be doing the translation, but hold on before we get too far into this. We need to do some introductions because at least we have one new guest here. So we're going to start with you, Courtney.
Who are you? Why are you here? How do we rope you into this?
Courtney: I'm well, partially here because I'm a huge fan of the Elliot Volkman style of communication. So thanks for having me on. And I'm here because I actually I think all of us are on the same page. I'm a huge proponent of the value and necessity of I don't even call them soft skills, I typically call them non tech skills.
I think sometimes when we call them soft skills, it makes them sound less important. And I don't think any of us think they're any less important. And some might argue they're even more important than those technical skills. I cut my teeth in my career as an adventure travel guide. Right out of the gate.
I had to work on my communication skills to get the job done and that's a skill that I Continue to develop and have brought forward into my cyber security career. So yeah excited to be here and talk about it some more
Elliot V: And I will say I was just trying or itching to find any excuse to bring you on here. So if anyone has had the pleasure of seeing Courtney present, it is some of the most engaging information and presentation skills that I have ever seen. So you are perfect for this topic. And I think you might have actually been presenting around the same time that Neal was at a conference that I hosted.
His approach is throwing candy bars at people, which I personally love, but you get people up and moving around and that takes a different level of a cat hurting.
Neal: To say people tend to move when you throw a king size Snickers at their
Courtney: no doubt
Elliot V: that's true. In fact, I'm going to steal that tactic for a presentation that I'm going to be giving in a couple of weeks. So we'll see how that goes.
Neal: I want to finish reintroducing but I want to call out that is not a tactic I use all the time. It was a tactic I used in a post COVID conference world where everybody was not really sure they should be in the room. And then Elliot has since made it a good Indirect branding for me on stage at certain moments in life.
So
Courtney: Well, I love that you said you don't use it every time because right everything comes back to context know your audience
Evgeniy: No, the
Neal: sometimes you got to bring paydays instead of Snickers.
Courtney: That's right. I would not be the audience for a payday bar.
Elliot V: All right. Jenny, you've been with us before you have. I don't know you, you're like an organizer of chaos in this world of cyber security, you bring people together in physical at conferences of your own sort. You're a voice, you connect people, but I don't know. What else would you like to expand? Obviously you've been here with us before, but oh, you're an author now.
Look at that. All right.
Evgeniy: Leave me by mistake. I have a copy of my book here with me. Maybe another hundred zero on the box that are near me as well. But I am an author. I think I realize, you know, the expressions that. A good son, I think a daughter as well need to what have a put a tree build a house bring a child So I think to make parents happy we need to write a book because when I saw my dad And he smiled when he got the first copy I'm like, oh my god, if I need if I knew the only thing I need to do is write a book
Elliot V: I'm going to keep that in my back pocket for no reason at all that I will not open up personal conversations with, but I love that.
Evgeniy: I am an author it took some time. It was interesting enough. People ask me How long did it take to write a book and like about a year like that's it I was like, actually, no, it took me a year to figure out what I want to write about. And then it took nine months to actually write the book. And then it took three months to kind of polish and do the production in the end.
And it was also interesting that I still need to write the blog about the journey of writing the book, because I learned a lot very, a lot about some of the things you need to think about when you're writing, like the marketing. Right when you're writing the book and not later on, but when I finished writing the book, my first idea was, okay, I need better testers.
And my editor was like, what do you mean by the testers? They're like, what do you mean? I cannot just publish something that I had to know if it's going to work. We need to make sure there's a good audience beside my idea people I'm talking to, or somebody need to read the book. And he's like, why would somebody read the book?
I'm like, I don't know. I'm going to ask them. that's it. He's yes.
Elliot V: Love it.
Neal: on a fun note I'm mulling over Ellie knows I'm a horrible guy at actually follow through on certain actions. I come up with a lot of great ideas, but I need people like Elliot who are the actual doers sometimes to make the things in reality. But that being said, I am writing a book on cyber history.
And and I call that out only because you say it only took you nine months and three months, but really as an author of any content or as a musician or anything that you're producing, it's a lifetime of experiences that go into creating that. So props to you for capturing.
Evgeniy: I will definitely will be happy to talk to you about the history of cyber security because I'm wondering which history you're writing, you know, cyber security is like an elephant and you put the blind people around it and everybody touch a part of the elephant and asking what it is for somebody say it's a year.
It's a lag. It's a belly. So I'm wondering which direction you're taking because I spent a lot of years in professional services and architecture. And it's a one aspect of cybersecurity and hacking pentesting. It's a different aspect of cybersecurity. Sock and defense is a different aspect of security policy and creation.
So I'm really intrigued. Where are you taking this? Cause I had an episode with a company a few weeks ago when we spoke about the history of seeing soar and all this part for last 20 years, it was very interesting to talk about it and why there was less events, for example. Sounds
Neal: that rabbit hole at some point in time.
Elliot V: thought you were going to tell me that you were going to move forward with this
Neal: Oh, the pot. No, that's still happening.
Elliot V: he's gonna he's gonna author a book instead. So I do want to provide some context. This episode sort of directly aligns with something that I was terrorizing Neal to do for quite some time.
But he
Neal: going to happen. I've got people lined up. I just.
Elliot V: I'm not guilt tripping right now. I just want to add a little bit of extra flair and context. Yeah, I'm guilt tripping. The reality is, there's just a lot of passion that comes out of Neal for this. Plus, I think we can all pretty much generally agree with there's a lot of different stories in our space of is there a skill gap?
Is there a talent gap? That seems to be shrinking or whatnot, but soft skills or however we want to position them are often not really brought to the equation or elevated to the state that we should be. So that is why we're spending a little bit of extra energy and time there of how you could spend.
Some of your own time to invest in those skills, what it brings to the general community, stuff of that nature. Courtney I'm going to just throw this right over to you again, because you are a fantastic presenter. Not that our other wonderful guests and our host is not, but you know, you obviously have a craft that comes alongside your technical skills.
That didn't just appear overnight. Maybe it did, but maybe you can tell us a little bit about why you know, Offer yourself out to the community and share your insight and how you kind of build the narrative in your mind. Essentially wrapping it around to the necessary skills with soft skills.
Transcripts provided
Courtney: started my career, I'm a more recent entrant into cybersecurity. So I've only been a practitioner in this space since 2020. And before that, like I said, it was an adventure travel guide for an active travel company for about a decade got my MBA and did, as my kids say business for another decade before moving into this.
And one of the things I always think about When I talk to other folks that are interested in either beginning or transitioning into a career. in the security industry is transferable skills and skill sets they need to build up. To your point, what are their current skills gaps? And you see, I think we all see a lot of conversation around, you know, do you pursue this certification or that line of study or this niche?
And not as much it's, I'm seeing it more lately, but not as much focus on what are the non technical skills that you need to develop. We see that a bit in conversations around, you know, See, so readiness, you know, are you are you a technical CSO or non technical CSO? Do you have a good sense of business acumen?
Do you have an MBA? Do you need an MBA? That sort of thing. So we're seeing that in more senior roles now, at least in the discussion about necessary skills. But I think there are so many other folks in the beginning or medium stages of their career that are either trying to figure out how to make a move, how to push their career to the next level, or maybe it's even just that they're trying to figure out how to get.
broader stakeholder buy in. or they're in sales, something like that. And that comes back again to knowing your audience. So when I think about my days in adventure travel guide, I was, Elliot's heard this before, I think, but I was, you know, like 22 fresh out of college, given the keys to a 15 passenger van company credit card.
And I was the product in the field, right? Adventure travel guiding all over the world. And we would get Pretty high on clientele meaning we'd get folks that were, I say type A, very accomplished in their day jobs, very used to calling the shots, and I as a 22-year-old , which, you know, I lead on that age 'cause I didn't look any older than I look now, so I definitely looked younger.
I'm trying to encourage these folks that are older than me accomplished in their careers, used to getting their way, calling the shots, and very quickly had to figure out how to make my ideas, feel like their ideas. So when I was herding those cats. They would go in the direction I wanted them to go in thinking all the time that it was their idea.
And I don't mean I was trying to manipulate or anything like that. I mean, I was trying to identify what are their motivators? Why are they here? What are they looking to get out of this? And that started, this is relevant. That started with a welcome. The very first day of a trip, it'd be like a six day trip, for example.
And the first thing I would ask folks when they would introduce themselves is What do you hope? Why did you choose this trip? Why? What are you hoping to get out of this week? So if we were say in the California wine country, which is an excellent spot for a bike ride, by the way, if we were in the California wine country, I could figure out, are they here because they're really excited to log a ton of miles and they just want to get after it and get their, you know, their physical exertion on.
Are they here because Their spouse really wanted to come on a trip and they like wine. So they want to discover the next new wine spot. So I could figure out how to encourage them to follow the run of show, if you will, in a way that fit in a broader group dynamic, but still delivered on their own on their own internal desires.
And that, I think. To me, that's, it's pretty clear how that can be applied to a cyber security environment. You've got stakeholders across all number of disciplines, right? Finance folks, marketing folks, operational folks. Everybody's got their own goal set and personality types. And, When you start a new job or when you're trying to get buy in for a new project, you've got to figure out how to put yourself on the same side of the table as those folks, so that it's a coalition build instead of a, this is what I want, how are you going to help me get it?
So yeah, so that's, I think those soft skills start with active listening, right? That's maybe a cheesy term now, but it's so true. Figuring out Where is this other person coming from? Not just what are their maybe business goals, but how do they like to work? Do they like to chat on Slack? Do they like to have a little informal chit chat at the top of a meeting or get right to it?
How do I work in a way that minimizes interpersonal friction to deliver the best results in a way that is compelling for both of us? And that's not something that folks are getting from Slack. Maybe traditional educational routes or bootcamps. I went through a bootcamp myself. I've, there's lots of discussion about bootcamp and what kind of skills they set folks up with.
And I enjoyed my experience, but I also came in with a whole, you know, two other careers before me, before I went into something like that and I built off of that. So that was kind of a rambling answer to your question, Elliot, but that's that's where I started building it.
Elliot V: Yeah.
Neal: You just basically described my entire work life balance for the last four and a half frickin
Evgeniy: wanted to add something to Corky, because you started to talk about it, and first of all, I'm really fascinated by what you were saying. I also like adventures, something we can talk about later on, whitewater, canoeing, kayaking, skiing, snowboarding. We've been talking about soft skills for the last, probably 15 minutes.
But I think for the people that are not familiar with the idea, you mentioned this, not technical skills. Some people mentioned this as a human skills. I think there is a big variety of soft skills. And I also like the idea that we have soft skills and we have places where we use soft skills, like a presentation.
By itself, or if speech is not a soft skill, but there is many parts where we use self skills in the presentation being on a video call is not a soft skill, and I have a chapter about video calls in my book and people like WTF, how soft skills is like, because we take a lot about soft skills and put in a video call.
And this is our main way to communicate. So maybe we can spend two or three minutes to talk about what are soft skills from each of us. So for me. As Courtney, as you mentioned, there are no technical skills. So our skills will be something that we expect. A similar answer all the time. Chemistry, mechanics, mathematics, programming, and soft skills are very dynamic in my mind, where they can change and require quite a lot of understanding of the other person.
I have this joke, What I'm presenting about soft skills and I'm going to chat GPT and I'm asking how you're doing. How are you doing? How are you doing? They're getting the same answer. I'm good. I'm good. How are you? How can I help if I'm gonna ask Elliot Courtney O'Neall? How are you doing? How are you doing?
How are you doing? You're gonna punch me in the face after the first time and you will be right, you know Why because I need to pay attention, you know, there's different ideas So this is one part and I think from my perspective You There is two core ones that I think are important. One is curiosity.
If you're not curious enough to understand what's happening around you, you're not able to move yourself, move the needle. The second one is vulnerability. Is actually open up. And try new things, try to ask if you're a salesperson, if you're going to buy this, if you're an engineer, you might probably going to work, or you can ask for more money or different table or whatever it is that you require to actually open up and be vulnerable there.
So this is my tool can talk more, maybe somebody else want to contribute.
Elliot V: the next
Courtney: Both of those things. I think about the more you step outside your comfort zone, the bigger it gets. That's part of back to your original question, Elliot.
Why do I present? It makes me uncomfortable just enough that I'm like, okay, this is good for me. And that vulnerability, I think that's acknowledging that there are things you don't know and that you want to continue learning. And I tell folks that are interested in security as a career That to me, those two, you just nailed it.
Those two things I think are critical to success in that field. You have to open yourself up to the fact that you don't know everything, that you never will know everything and that constant learning, mild discomfort and curiosity for what's next is what's going to propel you forward.
Neal: think those are awesome calls. It's a great summarization of Rex. And so for my part, you know, this is whether I'm working in a consultative fashion, pre sales fashion, post sales. You know, the conversation dynamics are always different. And what I have to do for my day to day. And I, at my company, Deja, cover that entire spectrum.
So I get people on a call that it's, sometimes it's the first call. Sometimes it's the first meeting. I go to conferences, present. First time meeting someone who's interested in whatever it is we're doing. And, unfortunately for them, usually their first impression is they sat in a room and saw me on stage.
Fortunately for me, it makes it easier because they have questions preemptively to come out and comment. So it gets the dynamic out of the way pretty quickly for my sake, but sitting at a booth at a conference, soft skills, being able to sit there and look at the guy who's wearing the suit and tie versus the guy wearing the shorts and a t shirt and not automatically assume the guy in the shorts and t shirts, the tech guy, but understand your audience when they come up to the table and be willing to look and observe what's going on around them, look at their badge, understand that this is SVP of this versus Intel analyst of that.
And tailor your responses and expectations of that conversation until you have a reason to shift. I think a lot of people, especially in sales, get fixated on the slick sheet they have in front of them, and they read it, and that's it. And this goes for both sales engineers, new ones, more as well as the sales rep themselves.
And they're not willing to open up, like you both mentioned, and be a little more engaging to truly fact find or build some kind of temporary, potentially long term relationship, hopefully. With that persona and in sales, it's a requirement. If you want to really have a good sales cycle to have a relationship post sales, where I sit most of the time, it's a requirement.
Evgeniy: we need at least two hours to finish this episode. You know, there are
Neal: Yeah. Oh it's ridiculous. And I, Elliot knows this. I practice soft skills, non tech skills very well, but I am not a non tech skills person.
Evgeniy: How do
Neal: put me in a room, I'd rather you
Evgeniy: Okay, we didn't finish what are soft skills, but how do you practice?
Neal: I, so I'm very similar to Courtney. I started off my journey in the military, right? We're mostly aware of that. And my presentations were in front of very highly ranked individuals. My first time doing presentation, my very first presentation to anyone outside of my watch chief was to the, our ambassador to Columbia, along with the president of Columbia at that time.
That's the first presentation I ever made. And it was amazingly horrible. I hate, I despised 110 percent presenting in a room of people, whether I knew them or not. But to your point, it's you practice it, you read the books, you learn the skill sets, you go do things, you make yourself vulnerable and put yourself out there.
Five years ago, had we had this conversation, I would have told you I hate getting up on stage. 18 months ago. I tell you, I love it and I learned something every time I get on stage and I legitimately enjoy presenting and engaging with people in some way or fashion to do that. But it took me a lot of steps to get there.
Took me a lot of these types of conversations. Two years ago, podcast idea. I said yes to Elliot because I like him. And because I'd done a lot of podcast interviews, but that didn't mean I wanted to actually do it. I enjoy it now. Let's me be up front. But it's a learned skill. It has to be very few people come out of this world and can understand people dynamics.
You have to practice it,
Evgeniy: I want to add something, but before maybe Alex, you talk about your soft skills and your definition, because I definitely want to add something about the experience and like the motivation of public speaking as well. And my first interview my, my first public speaking experience.
Elliot V: Yeah first of all, I appreciate that you are taking over asking the questions because that will go right into where I'm going with this, which is. I actively try not to participate in the soft skill opportunities where I bring as many people to the equation. So I get to just hang out in the background.
And when there's like an opportunity, if I have to, I'll say a couple of words and that's it. That's my soft skills in a nutshell, but mostly joking aside. Just forcing yourself to be way outside of your comfort zone. Like I am a introverted hermit. I don't go out in those kinds of situations.
Yeah, exactly. Like you have to push yourself out to be able to do that. Because if you live within your comfort zone, you're never going to be able to experience those things. So podcasts, videos, webinars, the amount of stupid, goofy things that I've recorded with myself on that just pure embarrassment follows it as soon as I hit publish.
I'm like, This is the dumbest thing I've ever put together, but you got to do it because people like it. You just got to ignore your own feelings and emotions connecting to that information if you also are aware that the information that you're doing in that format will land. Well, sometimes you just got to make yourself the guinea pig of it.
Courtney: We're fine with MVP in a software world, right? Like, why can't we find with MVP in our own personal presentation? It's feels so scary. I think
Neal: just an anecdote on him. When we first met, I had worked at a couple of different product companies. Done webinars, done a limited amount of in person presentations on stage prior to that. I've done a lot of news interviews, courtesy of my first public job, my first private sector job at Arbor Network.
So that was a whole weird set of skills to learn how not to get quoted wrong in news, but when I'm, this is sincere. When I met Elliot here he was the first time I met a marketing person that knew how to manage the non, the more technical me versus the non technical me. I'd already developed a lot of relationship skills, but Elliot knew how to put them on paper and actually make heads or tails of my ramblings.
And for the time that we worked directly together, legitimately made me a better person and presenter, because I think he sleeps on a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. I probably stuffed in his pillowcase.
Courtney: you're right.
Neal: But Elliot, regardless of his introverted nature Elliot has some epic people skills on how to manage rooms and manage Manage conversations,
Elliot V: Yeah I will. As much as I hate taking any of that kind of positive reinforcement feedback I will at least accept the Peacekeeper type title, even though that is not internally how I approach things. I would love for it to just be decisive and say, it's this way, but we don't live within that reality where we can just take a single route.
Unfortunately, compromise is a very necessary measure regardless of how organizations typically run. Oh,
Neal: but like Courtney mentioned, learn how to couch it the right way and make it their idea when it's yours. That's leadership. Managing the manager. That's another book.
Courtney: Managing up. Well, or like you were just saying, like the context that there's another soft skill, I think is looking at all the different contextual clues in any conversation, and that could be when you're talking about, maybe it's a project kickoff meeting. where you've got multiple stakeholders there and you're in taking the technical specifications of a project, but also the personalities, the overarching business goals knowing how to put those different and disparate, often disparate pieces together to paint a fuller picture.
I think that's a soft skill that a lot of folks, if they've just been tunnel view technical can miss sometimes. So that's, Taking in those little, and it's emotional intelligence, I think too. So video conferencing, right? It's different now in the post COVID world where we're doing a lot of video conferencing.
Where I think a lot of folks are you know, maybe I'm fixated on a sticker in the background of Neal's of Neal's background, and I don't catch, you know, a facial expression on a, to a, you know, something that I mentioned. Learning to take in those different physical cues on a video conference is different than it was in physical, in the physical landscape.
But that, again, I think just feeds back into. Pulling in all those different pieces and looking at how they inform the broader picture. You know, this true crime TV shows where all the strings are going in different directions. That's a soft skill. I think.
Neal: So on that, one of the greatest things I think I've learned is how to be willing to reinterpret whatever it is I'm saying and or presenting in various ways, right? As you learn the room, as you learn the personas and having someone or group of people who can present. Idea A, but make it seem like B, C, D, E, or at least different iterations there.
That goes back to it. Once again, how do you influence that persona into a positive outcome based off of what you know your requirements are? And I going to use this word very purposely. You are intentfully trying to manipulate a scenario for the betterment of you and hopefully that person as well.
And so it's a little inception. How do you get the right words and marketing term? I, what is that? The SEOs, right. And other stuff to get things to pop off in the right direction. I don't know.
Elliot V: Close
Neal: that's essentially what you're doing. You're trying to get the right keywords into their brain and you're trying to figure out what those are for their eyes to light up and go, Oh yeah.
And go that way. Yeah.
Evgeniy: which is a very important part. I'm a second time immigrant. English is not my first language. English is actually my third language. I used to speak very fast. I used to mumble. I used to eat at the end of the sentence. And it was quite horrible in the teenager part, especially when you just started to date.
Elliot V: able to
Evgeniy: Long story short, when I moved to Canada and I required to present. Not in the conference at first, just to customers, explain the idea, explain what we're going to do, explain in the end what we did. What I realized is not what I said only, but how did I say it and how they made them feel. It's actually how the book starts as well. And I learned when I, and it happened almost by mistake because I was very excited about the architecture, the design, the clustering of the firewall, how it's working and failing over people like, dude, there's no way you're so excited about this topic. It's probably true. There's probably have to be the way it's working.
And I started to incorporate in my presentation. I would basically take the passion and kind of dial it in as much as possible. And we'll be very vocal and explain how it's working. And yes, Texas wasn't the best. I still don't understand the accent. It's who are you and for where you came? But in majority of the other places, the idea of bringing passion and dialing the passion and the excitement of your topic really work and people like, wow, there is something there.
There's something happening. And definitely when you love to slow down, when you learn how to take the filler words and make pauses, when you know how to hold the pause to know when you know how to lower your voice or bring the voice up definitely helping. And I did went and did an training for my voice training with a therapist.
And I actually learned how to think it didn't really work out. I'm not thinking, but if he helped me quite a lot, where he's dude, forget about the accent. You're totally fine. Just do be yourself. You have a low voice. You have an accent. People are going to remember you as you are because you have such a unique voice.
And it really helped me. And he made a very interesting part. And it's not the part observation. We as a human being, if we have a back pain, we'll go to a doctor, if we have a tooth pain, we'll go to a doctor. If you want to have a haircut, we'll go to a stylist. We'll go and say, I don't like my voice.
I'm going to go to a voice therapist. I'm going to go to a speech therapist. Almost none. Besides that, if you're not presenting and recording and have a podcast, you're not going to record yourself on the phone. And try to analyze your voice. And with AI, there are so many amazing products right now that tell you literally you've been saying, aha, too much, or, you know, or you like, or you're taking over the conversation. And it's, I don't know if you know, it's not even soft skills. It is part of soft skills, but there is side soft skills when you can help yourself. You don't need other people for that to start, but I definitely recommend everybody's listening. Just for the hell of it to record yourself. Listen to yourself.
Don't worry. You're gonna hate yourself It took me eight months to be okay with my voice And if you know anybody that teach piano teach voice development go for a lesson or two Understand your voice if you want to go even deeper try to describe your voice How does your voice sound like in writing? Is it?
Playful. Is it catchy? Is it direct? How do you communicate? You'll be surprised. This is a weird thing to do, to try to describe your voice in writing.
Courtney: Yeah. Yeah.
TryHackMe to TCM Academy, Free Microsoft skill, you know, training and so on and so forth. And it's harder for folks to wrap their heads around, how do I get assistance to up my game with my non technical skills? Everything from, say interviewing, right? People have a hard time, maybe they're landing interviews, but they're not getting job offers from their interviews.
How do they get help with that? Do they, can they put themselves out there and make themselves vulnerable enough to, you know, ask a friend or a colleague or former colleague Hey, can you do a mock interview for me? That's really scary. I mean, I don't love interviewing. Don't get me wrong, but it doesn't keep me up at night.
But even for me, someone who's relatively comfortable with interviewing, that makes me feel warm and hot. Just to think about asking a peer, just do a mock interview for me. When I've helped students go through say like coding assignments or security engineering assignments and soft skill assignments, then the number one thing they've struggled with is a video recording of them giving their sort of like elevator pitch about who they are and what they stand for.
That's by far their worst assignment.
Evgeniy: Courtney, how the hell, excuse my French, they can be okay with that? If all the studies and every podcaster I know tell me right away, when we started, we hated our voice. I don't know anyone that record themselves and say, Oh my God, I sound so amazing. So you expect someone that never recorded themselves to record under two minutes or five minutes.
Now you have to tick, tick tick, tick your dad to record themselves. Then they're going to listen to themselves say, Who the hell are you? How do you speak? I me, Evgeny, me want to deploy firewall. Let's do this. So this is wrong on our end because we don't teach people. We don't explain to people.
We make them kind of become a machine without being ready because in real life, they're not going to communicate with that. And really, you were trying to say something And
Neal: I was highlighting the fact that Elliot was born with the wonderful golden vocal cords there. Him and Chase Cunningham heard themselves speak the first cry and they were both like, yeah, we're sexy. But that being said I completely agree. I, that, that was a legitimate fear for me transitioning from FaceTime.
So most of those things I did in the military were never behind a mic. They were always in a crowded room of people waiting to judge me in my uniform more than my presentation skills. It's all right. I'm a Marine. I got that one on lockdown. But when I had to start speaking on a microphone for the first time and legitimately hearing how I was presenting myself, it wasn't something that someone came up and said, you should practice this.
I just thought, Oh, I'm going to get on the mic. Everything's going to be fine. I picked up the mic for the first time Holy crap, I sound like a screeching eel. Let's move this forward as quick as possible. And then I know for a fact, I rushed through whatever that presentation was. And I think I was nervous enough about the whole thing to begin with that it slowed me down enough to where people don't complain as much.
That's still how I felt about it. Right? So true facts, listen to yourself, understand what, how your inflections and affectations are being presented and figure out how to make that impactful and get over yourself as I needed to. And now when I go into a room and I pick up a microphone, it's yeah, okay, cool.
I'm fine with this. I'd rather not, but
Evgeniy: talk about fear because we mentioned fear several times. Fear from executives that are coming to a trip, fear to talk on the phone. Courtney, you mentioned something that I really want to touch base. Fear slash a bit of excitement when you're going to present because you're pushing yourself out of the comfort zone.
And in a way, I kind of hate the idea when we have all this training. Let me help you remove the fear. Let me have you do something else. No, fear is good. Because if you see a kitty cat on the street, awesome. If you see a lion on the street and you're not scared, something's wrong with you. If you're going to present to one person and you're not scared, okay, when you slowly going to present to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 15, 20, 100, this here, Courtney, has actually measured.
It's kind of scary, but it excitement as well. And I was talking to a person a few months ago and they make a very interesting analogy. Fear is something we don't know the outcome. Excitement is the same, but we know the outcome.
Courtney: That's just what I was going to say. One of the best reframes I ever read was article about people interviewing Olympic athletes right before a competition. And they'd ask are you scared? Are you nervous? And they're like, I'm excited. And it's the same feelings, right? It's the same feeling in your gut.
It's just the athletes have figured out how to frame it more positively. And yeah, to your point, it's same. You're invested in something you don't yet know the outcome of and it helps tap into some really good energy. All you have to, not all you have to do, it's not as simple as that, but one of the things you can do to help harness that
Evgeniy: You need to transfer it. Yes. You need to transfer it to something good. And there is also the other expression. If you have a problem, when you understand that, okay, this is a problem that part of the solution is to understand when is the problem start. So every time you're going to present, and you know you're going to be scared, excited.
Oh, okay. I know what's happening. Oh, now I can do breathing exercise. I can do physical exercise, like literally. When I started to present, I'll go to a washroom, sit down and do box breathing for four minutes to calm myself down and go to the flow. Or we'll do like rotated exercise to kind of calm myself in.
But now I know what's going to happen. And I'm still afraid and I'm still excited. The more is like 500 people. Because, okay, 500 people is relatively new for me. 200, it's okay. You know what was actually interesting? When COVID started, and I'll start to present this is strange. There is no energy.
I don't know how many people is there. It's I don't feel it. But then, in the end of the COVID, it's again, I need to present. Okay, where's the wall? Where's the microphone? I will talk to the wall. But you don't know if it's one person, or if it's 500 people on the other end.
Neal: I think it's fun for my journey getting started doing all this. I passed companies before I got to where I'm at. Like I mentioned, public presentations in any vein. Fate, like legit in a room was limited to still government interactions. Funny enough, I did a lot of stuff within the ISAC communities, limited stuff there, but it was with the peer group.
Usually the people had already talked with a lot. I still didn't really feel comfortable, but it was a more comfort zone for me and typically not on a microphone. And my public presentations were far, few and far between up until the last COVID timeframe. Now I'm on stage. I just, since August, I've done six presentations, six, seven presentations at different conferences.
Right. And it's a cyclic thing because of how the conferences echo to work. So I get on stage probably about 15 times a year for varying things. However, comma, whether I presented it before or whether it's a net new presentation, I've grown where originally I get up on stage. I didn't really sweat buckets, but I definitely sweat I definitely had to clear the phlegm out of my throat a lot more than you should being up on stage And so i'd have to go through a routine where i'd sit off on the stage for a good five minutes Just letting it all build up, you know Whatever I could to clear out my throat and it was just that hesitation factor in the back of my body Like what's about to happen?
Are you sure you really want to do this? You're not the guy that's supposed to be doing this just go do it and then you get up on stage 10 minutes into it. Everything's fine, but I still There's always a little bit of trepidation, but not out of fear. It's more out of Am I really doing the right service for my audience and even if i'm not Correct.
Yeah, it's transitioned from me worrying about me And i've always wanted to be stuff that was valuable but getting to the point where I could stop fixating on myself Outright and how I felt versus how the audience was going to actually be engaged or if I was doing them a service And then
Evgeniy: important point. Sorry, I can't do this. I didn't want to
Neal: no, you're good and the last piece Transitioning from that focal point and now my trepidations are fixated on outright soliciting for feedback and not worrying about that feedback, right?
When we finish up a conference, some of these places I have do feedback surveys within the room. I always want the checkbox to be good on presentation, 100%, you know, did I get it as close to a 5 as I could as a presenter? And then my material, if someone marks low, medium, high, that's where I focus.
I've got the five on presentation most of the time, I'm happy there. Now I can legitimately quit worrying about that layer most days and worry about how the content is consumed and if it was legitimately valuable. So I still worry about it, but I don't worry about me. I worry about my actual content. And is it valuable?
Evgeniy: The interesting part here. So first you mentioned about what you think about on stage. For me, it's still sometimes very surprising when I start speaking and everybody's quiet. I'm like, why is it so quiet? Is it literally listening to me? Like seriously?
Here
this, one of the psychology part. And. It's very interesting because as a human being, we can only focus on a few things at the same time, not multitasking. Like we can drive the car, we can pay attention to what's happening around, we can shift the gears, we can be on the phone.
So we have enough focus point to do four or five things. Why it's important because if you're scared that you're scared about delivering the presentation, you have less focus point. On pay contention on new material and less focus point to paying attention or the audience and what they're doing If you transition performing or according to sayings The idea of being scared to have the excitement and then near as you're saying I'm less concerned about me right now.
I'm more concerned and I'm more focused on the other part because I'm doing a service for the other people. I'm not here to shine. I'm here to provide information, lesson, and whatever it is we're doing as part of the presentation there. So your focus points are changing right now. You can pay attention to people.
Are they interested? Maybe you need to modify something. You need to be louder. Maybe you need to be quieter. Maybe you need to be slower. Maybe you need to be faster. So fascinating.
Neal: And to be fair, you still have to teach yourself to be a good presenter because it leads into being able to do all of what you just mentioned. I think being able to get over yourself to build into being a good presenter, that's the initial hurdle. The rest of it comes once you figure out that they're not in there to throw soup cans and tomatoes at you.
They're there to do something beneficial, right? I think that's where most people maybe get the initial hiccup is they really legitimately are concerned about direct personal critique, not content. Initially, they're worried about, did my voice crack here? Did I cough too much there? Did I sneeze at the wrong time?
Things like that. The reality, once you get over that stuff, you can work on the legitimate skills
Evgeniy: too much into the microphone, you know,
Courtney: Yeah. But you raise an important point to back to your earlier question of Jenny what are soft skills? I'd say the ability to not just take, but solicit proactively solicit feedback is critical, right? I have told other folks, I was like adverse adversity to, to feed or averseness to feedback to me is a career limiting move.
Not only should you be graceful in your reception of it, but you should be seeking it out. And then how do you take it deep? It's really easy for many of us to get defensive and want to explain ourselves like, Oh no, that's not what I meant. Or, Oh, it's because of this or whatever. And that's a natural human inclination, I think.
But to sit there and let your feedback giver. Run through what they have to say and just absorb it. Thank them for that feedback is hard to do. And you might have excuses or reasons or things to come back with, but unless they're asking for those now's not the time to give that. Right.
Maybe at a later time, I may have misunderstood what your request was there. Next time. This is what we'll do to make sure that we're clear. What have you, but. Again, not just being receptive and graceful in accepting of critical feedback, but in actually finding opportunities to solicit it in in organic way, right?
It's not helpful if you hit up your boss after every meeting, be like, how was it? Was that okay? That's not
Evgeniy: and
Courtney: anyone any favors.
Evgeniy: Like I call in a book. I only just myself is called it Be able to guide someone and be able to ask for guidance. So Neal you did post sales I did post sales as well. You did pre sales Courtney. I'm not sure how much you have interaction with customers If you do custom success or whatever It is an important part.
We're not even talking about sales right now that you can be on the call and you can ask the customer, Mr. Customer, can you guide me? What's the best way to resolve X, Y, Z, or Mr. Customer. I'm going to guide you right now. What's going to happen in the next week, us working together. When I, this post sales with firewall, and this is what I guide people as well, that work for me.
You come into the room and you say, Hey, we're going to have five days with you. This is the plan for the five days. This is some of the high level tasks in the end of the day, like Mark, what did in the morning, you come in, okay. The plan for today is this. You come all the time, guiding the customers and then know what to expect.
It's going to be easier for them, but at the same time, like Mr. Customer, are we doing what you want? Are we going in the same piece? Are we too fast? Are we too slow? And this could be happening in every place. When the customers call you and screen with you, this is maybe the time to shut up and listen and have the active listening.
Let them, this team come out and then explain how we can help. There's a lot of dynamic when and how to do it.
report,
Courtney: Yeah. That's back to that emotional intelligence piece, I think too. And everyone's the hero of their own story. Right. And so if you are trying to convey. your ideas or you're trying to help someone, help them be their hero. That's part of why when when I do presentations, I look for ways to engage the audience as much as possible, right?
Nope. Not many people really like to be talked at, and there's a time and a place. Sometimes. We have to talk at people like safety talks, right? You're talking about what I'm always a white, whitewater kayaker and rafter to you have to give a safety talk. That is a talking at someone's situation. That's not the time for creative brainstorming.
But when you're trying to convey an idea or get some consensus building. That is the time for participation, I think, and let folks be the steward of their own story, and that can be everything from, again, just short, simple exercises, or thought provoking questions, or, you know, when I'm presenting, if I have the opportunity, again, every audience is going to be different, but have the opportunity to bring some audience members up on stage, Thank you very much.
Or get people up and moving. The last presentation Elliot taught me give, I had the whole audience getting up and shifting seats. And I connected that back to, you know, disruption of expectations. So if there are physical ways. or at least verbal ways to get your audience to engage, then that engages other pieces of their brain and help them reinforce that they are an active participant in whatever story you're telling and that this is their story to tell as well.
So yeah, time and place for talking at, talking with, and co creating a story.
Neal: I think could get everyone ever to work in a handful of jobs to get good people skills, one of the things I think has been beneficial for me, I started off as an Intel analyst and other things, very, once again, non soft skill oriented Marine. You told me point and click, I point and click, you can fill in the blanks with what that was I was clicking.
That did not require soft skills.
Elliot V: about
Neal: Quite the contrary, I had plenty of moments where I told people on radios to piss off because I didn't like them. But that was the earlier me.
Evgeniy: Did you use soft voice, Neal, or no?
Neal: guy, oh man, there's times I wish I would have. I probably wouldn't have had so many issues with my paycheck later on.
That being said, you know, the one thing I think for me personally that helped a lot, military included. Military, It teaches, at least the Marine Corps, Army, Air Force, Navy, and the rest of the ones that nobody likes to remember do very similar things. But I think in the Marine Corps we do this a little more focused because we're a smaller grouping, but going to boards simulates doing job interviews.
It simulates a stressful environment of being critiqued and answering things. I have taken that and I've applied that here in the private sector at times where, whether it's onboarding someone just in general and then we ask them to do a product reset, a product company, get a new hire that I don't care if they're a sales engineer, a sales rep, or a VP of marketing.
You know, you go through, you learn something about the product and you present that back to us as if you were doing a sales pitch of some sort or a demo, whatever it may be. And you're doing that in front of three, four other people. And the idea is just to see how those soft skills are. After we've already hired you, we've done a little bit of that before.
Maybe we're not hiring you for a soft skills job, but we still need to engage you and we still need you to have an understanding of what it is we're offering. So you present it, we critique it, you go back and rinse, lather, repeat. And so it's kind of like a board review. It's a going to a NCO board or something like that in the military.
And that's how I like to treat them. Gives people the experience of being critiqued, whether they've had it or not. Gives them a chance for rebuttal as part of the format. And then it goes back. There's wonderful examples of that all across academia. But that's the one thing I like to do, push them into a consultative mentality, allow them to present and then allow them to present the solution post critique.
Elliot V: All right, well, thank you all for joining us and Courtney for being a 1st timer to the podcast and certainly will not be the last time. But this is. I just want to reiterate is super important. As we push back and address the skill gap versus employee or talent gap scenarios, and also just trying to help support and push security practitioners further.
things of this nature are super beneficial, especially as you want to more effectively communicate findings and things that you're identifying. I find that personally effective, especially if you're going towards like threat intelligence world, where you're trying to articulate a full story instead of just like one little speed bump that you're trying to walk through.
So I really appreciate y'all providing some context, some background, some of your journey and how it You kind of experienced some of these things. But if I could sum this up very quickly, it is just be uncomfortable or be comfortable being uncomfortable. I think that's the way there it is. All right.
I got it. Right. But that is it. That's the end of this episode. We really appreciate you joining in and we will see you next time.
Courtney: you.
Announcer: Thank you for joining a Z T an independent series. Your hosts have been Elliot Volkman and Neil Dennis to learn more about zero. Go to adopting zero trust.com. Subscribe to our newsletter or join our slack community viewpoint express during the show did not reflect the brands, employers,
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